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Hands-on: Reading e-books on Android with Aldiko

Android has spawned a number of e-book readers. Ars reviews Aldiko, a free, …

Although pocket-sized touchscreen devices are arguably not the most comfortable way to read copious amounts of text, modern multifunction smartphones offer a convenient alternative to dedicated e-book devices such as Amazon's Kindle. With the right third-party software, an Android handset can transform into a capable e-book reader whenever you have a spare moment to dive into a novel.

There are several excellent e-book readers for Android, each with a slightly different user interface and feature set. In this article, we will primarily be looking at one called Aldiko that is becoming popular.

FBReader

Many mobile Linux enthusiasts will likely already be familiar with FBReader, a venerable e-book application that was first released in 2005. I've used it on several devices over the years, including my Sharp Zaurus, Nokia Internet Tablets, and N900. The Android version of FBReader is a clone rather than a port—it has its own distinct code base that was developed largely in Java. Like the Linux version, it is open source software and is distributed under GNU's General Public License.

Sadly, FBReader for Android (sometimes called FBReaderJ) doesn't quite match the maturity of its native Linux counterpart yet. It is missing some of features and lacks compatibility with the broad assortment of e-book formats that are supported by the regular Linux version. Right now, it only supports ePub, OEB, and FB2. The developers plan to enable additional formats in future versions.

Although it's not the best choice for Android right now, I felt that FBReaderJ was worth mentioning in this article because it has a lot of potential and could be an ideal choice in the future when it achieves feature parity with its native Linux cousin.

Aldiko

Aldiko is a free e-book reader that was created specifically for Android. It has an excellent feature set and a top-notch user interface. Much like FBReaderJ, its biggest weakness is its lack of compatibility with many popular e-book formats—it only supports ePub.

When you first launch Aldiko, it will display its library management interface, which is designed to look like a bookshelf. The books that you have read recently will appear on the top shelf in a row that you can drag to scroll horizontally. The second row, called the Bookshelf, provides access to your complete e-book library. The third shelf provides access to online archives of free and public domain e-books that you can download over the air.

When you navigate to the full library view, you will see all of your e-books in a list with vertical kinetic scrolling. One book is displayed on each row, with a cover image, title, author name, publication date, and rating. When you select a book, the program will display the cover image while the opening text is loaded.

The text is clear, legible, and easy to read. It displays in full-screen, obscuring Android's top panel. It will use Georgia as the main body text font, but you can configure the font family, size, and weight in the settings dialog if you prefer something else. The application has a day mode, which displays black text on a white background, and an inverted night mode. You can configure the colors that are used in each mode. Margins, text spacing, and alignment are also configurable. It handles wrapping exactly as you would expect, with smart hyphenation.

Like most e-book readers, Aldiko has page-flipping rather than line-by-line scrolling. To move to the next page, you can drag your finger across the screen or tap one side of the screen. The volume rocker can also be used on most handsets. When you move to the next page, the old one will slide off to the side as the new one slides in. It's a subtle animation and is not too distracting.

The program loads one section of the text at a time, so you will sometimes encounter a brief bit of lag when you are switching from the end of one chapter to the beginning of the next. It displays a loading spinner during those kinds of transitions so that you won't have to wonder if it is hanging.

One of my favorite features of Aldiko is that it provides a convenient way to adjust the screen brightness. You can drag your finger up and down alongside the left-hand side of the screen to raise or lower the brightness. This is really useful, because I tend to adjust the brightness a lot when I'm reading depending on the lighting conditions in the room. I generally prefer to keep the screen brightness low when I'm reading so that it's not as harsh on my eyes and so that I can conserve battery life. When I'm reading outside, however, I generally have to crank it up because the screen on my Nexus One is difficult to read under direct sunlight unless it is at full brightness.

Aldiko provides several mechanisms for navigating through a book, including a table-of-contents menu and a bookmark system. When you touch the screen, you can see a small progress indicator at the bottom of the page that will show you where you are in the current chapter or section. If you want to see your position in the entire book, you can open the progress viewer from the application's menu.

To add new items to Aldiko's library, you can import ePub files from your device's SD card or download complete books from several online content repositories that are supported by the software. Feedbooks, a website that distributes public domain literature and original content that is published under Creative Commons licenses, is one of the services that is accessible through Aldiko.

During my tests of Aldiko, I used the application to download science fiction author Cory Doctorow's novels Little Brother and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom from Feedbooks. Doctorow, a well-known blogger at BoingBoing and vocal proponent of intellectual property reform, makes the books available under Creative Commons licenses so that they can be modified and redistributed freely.

Aldiko displays download progress in Android's notification slider so that you can see when your downloads are complete. Down and Out is the kind of book that I can generally read in a single sitting, so it offered a good opportunity to evaluate Aldiko's conduciveness to reading on my Nexus One. I was able to read the entire book on my smartphone without feeling fatigued or suffering eyestrain. I did, however, have to switch hands periodically to rest my tired thumbs.

Adding other books to Aldiko's library is a bit less intuitive because the feature still has some rough edges. Aldiko will create an eBooks folder on the root of your SD card to store ePub files, but it uses a separate SQLite database file to actually manage the contents of its library. You can't just put arbitrary ePub files into the folder hierarchy and expect it to work.

You have to put your ePub files in Aldiko's "import" folder and then select the "Import" item from the menu on Aldiko's home screen. It will scan the import folder, attempt to extract the metadata from ePub files that are stored there, copy the files into the regular folder hierarchy, and then add them to the library database. After the application completes that process, the books that you have added will be accessible through Aldiko's library interface.

Aldiko is free to download from the Android Market. It displays some light advertising in some parts of the user interface—such as the online book catalog—but not while the user is reading. For more details about the application, you can refer to the official website.